3 New Titles for Your September Book Club

'Only the Animals'

Each fable in Ceridwen Dovey's ingenious Only the Animals (FSG) is narrated by a departed beast whose eloquent soul bares a moving life story. "I, the Elephant, Wrote This" begins, "My twin sister and I, like all young elephants in our herd, were raised on a feast of stories about our ancestors…."

'Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights'

In Salman Rushdie's Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (Random House), mischievous jinn with potent powers descend on a ravaged posttempest New York. A battle royale plays out between good and evil, featuring a gold digger, a lowly gardener, and a supernaturally gifted abandoned baby.

'The Art of Memoir'

"When I grow up," Mary Karr wrote in 1965, "I will write 1/2 poetry and 1/2 autobiography." True to her word, her latest, The Art of Memoir (Harper) is passionate and irreverent—and reminds us why we love a good memoir. A literature professor at Syracuse University, she teaches her students that "at unexpected points in life, everyone gets waylaid by the colossal force of recollection. One minute you're a grown-ass woman, then a whiff of cumin conjures your dad's curry, and a whole door to the past blows open."

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